It’s time for round two of the heavyweight tilt many NBA observers feel will be the Toronto Maple Leafs championship rings bout in the Eastern Conference.

The Toronto Maple Leafs championship rings for sale and Boston Celtics are in many ways mirrors of each other. Both are surprisingly young teams, both have been built with the idea of flexibility and position-less basketball in mind, and both are absolutely stocked with useful basketball players.



But who is more stocked?

The narrative seems to be, at least from American media, that the Boston Red Sox championship rings are the deepest team in the East. But is that actually true? Let’s dive into both teams from player one, right down to player number 14. (The Celtics, as of now, have only gone 14 deep this season; point for the Raptors there.)

The metric we’ll use here is going to pretty simple: Value Over Replacement Player (or VORP). It’s an imperfect number, but it is at least an all-in-one number. I considered RPM as well, but it’s a bit harder to source for careers and for the current season. So I looked at a player’s career VORP, their best ever single season, what they did last year, and a three-year peak.

Now obviously a number can’t tell us everything. Reputation matters — to a point — but the point of stats is to help see past the distorting field rep provides.



What else matters?

1) Availability — A guy who isn’t playing everyday, or is on limited minutes will see a slight hit on what their reputation says they should be. We can’t be sure that Gordon Hayward or Kawhi Leonard are truly healthy — no matter how well they are, or are not playing.

2) Recent history matters more — Some guys have accrued a ton of career VORP, but haven’t been that good in the last couple of years. That’s where last year and the three-year peak come in — someone like Serge Ibaka gets hurt by that, despite this bounce back season so far.

More championship sports rings, you can see me!!